Letter From a Thief
by TheLionOfLannister
Summary: The rebellion and the Girl on Fire, through Gale's eyes. Oneshot, Gale/Katniss.


My first shot at a Hunger Games story, having just finished the series. Not a terribly ambitious story, but rather, an attempt to get inside Gale's head a bit - and there is some angsty angst ahead, so be warned. Spoilers, obviously, for all three novels, and minor liberties have been taken here and there. Credit for the title goes to Chevelle's song of the same name.

* * *

Gale _hates _the Capitol.

It is not the common hatred of the poorer districts; the smoldering resentment bred into them by years and years of oppression and seventy-three instances of watching their children be forced to rip each other to pieces. Gale is no stranger to those feelings (useless though they are, because what is the purpose of rebellion if it is only an idea out of reach in your mind?), and he knows the Capitol hates _him_, considers him less-than-human and good only to work himself to death in a mine.

Like his father did. It is this (rain falling in sheets over a suddenly empty world and the echoes of his father's life in a withered house) that lets Gale know he can't follow the beaten District path. Bitter, resigned, jaded; destined to forever rage against the Capitol while still bowing to their unshakable authority – were it not for the family he looks out for he would have left it all behind _long _ago, taken Katniss with him to run away from the reach of their arm to somewhere _safe._

(safety is an illusion under the eye of the Peacekeepers, and Gale only has a rough idea of what it should feel like – he suspects it is an amplified version of that sense of freedom present out in the forests, with Katniss, when they can at least pretend this is normal and they are not caged in like animals)

But. The Capitol (who have taken _everything else _from him already) takes his best friend, too.

And so he takes a stand in the rebellion Katniss doesn't know she's starting the very moment she picks those deadly berries.

-N-

Gale isn't sure _what _he was expecting when she returned, but whatever it was he doesn't get it.

Normalcy is so far off the map that he can't even track it now, can't find it and pin it down; the jagged edges of things that were left unfinished before the Games still ring sharp in their echo, a reminder as cold as the gathering winter that things are...

Not what they were.

And Gale is happy that she lives in a safe house now with plenty to eat and he is glad that the goodbye in the Justice Building was not the last he got to give to her; that she was _strong _enough, tough enough, smart enough. He is glad that she spat in the faces of the Capitol, more than once, a small piece of consolation that he nurtures behind the bitter anger that has been rooted firmly in his chest since she left to play their twisted game.

He barely sees her after she returns, for weeks. Distance between them seems greater now than it did when she was in the arena; he's left to quietly care for his family, work hard to keep bread on the table while she plays up an illusion of romance that he does his best to turn a blind eye to.

When Gale finally does see her she is...

Not like he remembers.

Which. He is not terribly surprised by; she's been through more than he can even imagine, and the walled-off parts of her are something he's going to just have to get used to, he decides, let them mesh with the idea of Katniss he has in his mind until the seams are a bit less visible on the backdrop of change.

And he wasn't planning on it, but they're heading back when he finds himself forcefully shaking off the uncomfortable feeling that arises with memories of Katniss and Peeta in the Games; and before he even realizes what he's doing he turns and catches her face between his hands and smooths a thumb over the slash of her cheekbone, breathes in slowly and takes the half-second that follows to memorize every detail.

Gale kisses her.

She feels too small in the shelter of his arms for that image of her in his mind, but when she tentatively returns the kiss it tastes like warmth and life and promise; the first stirrings of dawn to combat the Capitol's eternal night.

-N-

There is rebellion and there is hope of rebellion; Gale feels as though they are forever caught by the latter, ensnared in some clouding knowledge that they cannot bring down the _Capitol, _that they shouldn't even try.

That's what the Hunger Games are meant to remind them of, right?

Still, the lashes on his back and the pain they bring hiss in the darkness that _this –_ punishment and the whispers of District 8's revolution –means the beginning of something new. Bold. No longer the stale whispered words, but a scream into the shadows, a threat against their oppressors that will bring their teetering on some unseen precipice to an end. For better or worse, this is a turning point.

Gale dreams in the spaces between agony; sees Katniss being threatened by the specters of Cato and Clove and the silhouette of President Snow, sees her die while he is frozen in place and helpless to save her from the encroaching shadows that overtake the land like the fires of war.

He wakes to pain that he welcomes, drinking it in and digging his heels into this grounded reality where the nightmares cannot reach him.

It takes time to realize that Katniss is _right there-..._

This, this is not a dream, though the edges are fuzzy enough for it to seem that way. She's stroking his hand, the finer points of her visage accented vaguely by dying light, and the brief exchange that follows soon finds itself blurred in the gathering fog, until the dulled corners of reality become too slick to hold onto.

But.

The feather-light brush of her lips on his is something he catches and clutches onto; tucks away in a safe place, where sleep and pain-killers cannot steal it away.

-N-

Things spin out of control; she's going off to the Games (again) and Gale finds a ragged sick feeling lodged in the pit of his stomach when he sees her released into the arena. He leaves the house and clings to a fence post and fights the nausea rising in his throat and the red haze descending like mist and threatening to sweep him away-...

He can't bring himself to watch after that.

And, it doesn't matter anyway; what was a storm becomes a nightmare and he finds himself with nine hundred lives and the charred ruin of District 12 in his hands. Their rescue is a blur lost in adrenaline and timid hope, the ashes of his shredded world whispering the promise that this is _finally going somewhere._

_At what cost?_

He can imagine Katniss asking that as clearly as if she was standing _right there, _and when they pull her battered body from the ruined arena he argues vehemently (he's good at that) until they let him in the medical room where she's being held.

He sits, still as night and seemingly impassive, at her bedside and strokes her hair (singed away in part by acid mist), touches her cheek (too cold for his taste, and very pale), and hopes (oh, if will could make it so) that her drug-induced sleep is at least peaceful.

To dream of darkness now would seem cruel, when there is nothing but a nightmare for her to wake to.

-N-

In the uniform gray of District 13, he sometimes feels as though he can't _quite _get a breath in; the renewed feeling of doing something (delicious though it is) tempered by his inability to adjust completely. He sometimes feels as though he is still tracking the ashes of District 12 over the too-clean floors of this new safe haven, and the constant feeling of _being watched _is an unpleasant sensation rigid down his spine.

But. They are at war. Fighting the Capitol and _doing _something, channeling the hatred bred in the fires of oppression into something worthwhile.

And at the front of it all: their Mockingjay.

The girl on fire.

He understands the nickname more than ever when they return to District 12 and, standing in the room where he'd recovered, she kisses him deeply, her fingertips leaving trails of fire as she runs them down the hard angles of his jaw; it tastes like flame and war and _hope._

_If we burn, you burn with us._

-N-

Sometimes he feels he's already _lost; _curious, really, this dull sensation of resignation to Peeta while the boy still seems to be wandering (lost) through the corridors of his tortured mind.

But. Peeta is warm and bright and _good_; all the things Gale can never be. Gale is cold command and frigid steel, stone to offset the iron of the Capitol and the war will alwayscome first because the war is what he has lived his entire life for.

That much he knows without having to think about it.

It doesn't make seeing her slips away from him (slowly, a slide into darkness where flame cannot reach and the Capitol is waiting to devour them both) any easier. When he gathers her into his arms during their assault on the Capitol itself (things have already twisted into nightmare, and he hurts all over but she numbs it, a bit) and she kisses him and he kisses back, it tastes like _I love you_ and _I'm sorry _and-...

And _goodbye._

-N-

Then: it's over.

Prim is gone, and Katniss might as well be; whatever it was they had shattered into pieces by the weight of his guilt and the ashes of war. Loss curls around Gale's heart, and so he simply quaranitines it and steels himself to build their new world, backed by razor-edged determination and unbending resolve.

There is a lot he wants to say, as he presses a quiver with that single arrow into her hands (words get tangled easily in this bone-tired weariness and hazy guilt) but in the end it just comes out as, "Shoot straight."

She doesn't; shocking and awful though what she does may be, he can't help the note of almost-pride that settles in him as he watches the last rebellion of the girl on fire.

The dying sparks of the flame that fueled the war.

But, he leaves her there with Peeta and the ashes of their once-home because he has no choice; tries his best to forget the girl on fire while the blaze of her echo burns on beneath his ribs.

(His Mockingjay)

-N-

His nightmares are simple now.

A single candle's flickering light, strong and clear and pure; snuffed out by shadow and gloom and leaving all the world to eternal night.

He still wakes screaming.

* * *

Even after everything? Team Gale all the way, yo.

I don't own any of it. Reviews are much loved and will be rewarded with... I dunno. Dead squirrels, I guess.


End file.
